THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT
By
Joe Wilkins
Copyright © 2015
The butterfly effect is a phrase that is being used more these days, but very few people really know what it means or how the term originated. However, to those readers who like to contemplate the mysterious, metaphysical aspects of our lives, I am hopeful this article will be of interest and benefit.
A useful definition of the term, butterfly effect, would be: Any event that occurs now, inevitably dictates or changes certain things in the future, but those future events are usually impossible to predict.
Let’s look at a hypothetical example: In our first scenario Little Bobby is up at bat for his Little League team in the final championship game in the bottom of the last inning. The bases are loaded and his team is behind three runs—needing four runs to win. Bobby proceeds to hit a grand slam homerun, and his team wins. He is instantly a hero. In the aftermath, in his community, he becomes the boy that all remember, and he receives much respect and adulation. This in turn convinces him that he is a good athlete and should consider taking baseball very seriously during the rest of his life. Because of this he puts much more effort into baseball, wins a college scholarship, plays well in college, gets professional offers, goes to the minor leagues, but gets hurt and can play no more. He spends the rest of his life working as a salesman, a job he doesn’t much like, but which provides a modest living for him and his family.
In the alternative to the above scenario, instead of hitting the home run, he strikes out and his team goes down in disappointing defeat. He is disappointed that he did not get a hit, that he let his team down, and soon thereafter begins to lose his passion for baseball. Instead, he puts more energy into his other interests, especially science, going on to college and becoming a civil engineer, working on many satisfying building projects. Later, he starts his own construction company and becomes quite wealthy.
Thus, the reader can see that in that one instant of time, with that final swing of the bat—one time hitting the ball for a home run, the second time striking out—Bobby’s life is completely altered onto two different pathways. Of course, in both of the above scenarios there were other butterfly effect moments in Bobby’s life as he followed each particular pathway, but the key moment was the swing of the bat, and whether he hit the ball—or missed!
An axiom of the butterfly effect would be this: After each episode in life, there always follows a particular set of circumstances and events that emerge from that event. Rephrased, following each behavior there always follow particular circumstances, some of which are of our choosing, but many of which lead to “unintended consequences.” Some common examples that lead to differing results are: marrying one girl or husband instead of another; accepting a particular job; moving into a certain neighborhood; walking down a particular street and getting robbed; a golfer selecting a four iron over a five iron, and getting a hole-in-one; driving down an alternative street and getting into an auto accident. It is easy to see that in many ways life is like a crap game. We toss the dice and get different results most of the time.
But now, dear reader, you must be wondering what has all this to do with butterflies and their effects? Where did that term come from and how does it relate to what has been discussed thus far?
How I came upon this concept is rather unusual. It was the Fall of 1953, I was in the 11th grade, reading an EC Comics, science-fiction, comic book story. The story was set in the year 2055, and time travel was an established activity. One particular company promoted safaris, whereby, for a considerable fee, hunters could travel back to the age of dinosaurs, and shoot a T-Rex dinosaur for a trophy. When the hunter and guides arrived at their destination, they were required to remain on “levitation pathways,” which suspended them above ground so as not to contact the environment and disturb anything. When the hunter, a man named Echels, confronts a T-Rex, the ferocious beast terrifies him, and he jumps off the pathway and runs through the jungle. His guides are furious with him, but they have to kill the T-Rex for their own safety. They locate Echels, then make him do some needed things to minimize the “damage.” Then all return to the year 2055.
However, when they get back, they notice some drastic changes in their society: English words are spelled and spoken strangely, people behave differently–and election results for the President have been reversed from what they were when they left. When Echels sits and takes his muddy boots off, he notices a crushed butterfly on his sole, and it is clear that the death of that butterfly, crushed as he ran in panic through the jungle back in pre-history, set off a chain of events that altered history thereafter. Thus, the phrase, butterfly effect, had its beginnings. In the following years, others have picked up on the phrase, especially weather scientists and forecasters.
I later learned that this EC Comics story was excerpted from a short story, “A Sound of Thunder,” written by famous science-fiction writer, Ray Bradbury, for Collier’s magazine, issue of 6/28/1952, and was later re-published In Playboy magazine in June, 1956. There was a movie made based on the story, but it was poorly done, and has deservedly been mostly forgotten.
What is the point of all this, you may ask? Surely this is something of interest only to philosophically-minded people. What has it got to do with my life? Good questions.
Let me illustrate with two personal examples.
My maternal grandfather, Ballard Lynch, was an Army surgeon. He was drafted in 1918 and sent to the battlefields of France. He was newly married and had his only child, my mother, just three months before he was shipped overseas. He saw my mother, as an infant, just a few times. In France, he was immediately sent to the front lines to address the wounds of the American soldiers. In a makeshift “hospital,” consisting of blankets and cots on the ground, he and two other doctors were attending to the wounded. Suddenly, an artillery shell hit next to them killing him and one other doctor. This was just two weeks before the war ended. That shell, killing him was a “butterfly” moment for me. Tragic as it was, it forever altered my maternal grandmother’s life, thrusting her onto a life’s pathway she otherwise would not have been on. It led to my mother being raised in a different community and under different circumstances than would have never otherwise happened, whereby she grew up, met, and married my father, producing me, my brother and sister. Without grandfather’s death I would not exist, much less be writing on this subject. A sadness that I feel about my grandfather was that I never got to know and enjoy life with him, and the despair I feel when I think about the fact that without his death in France, I wouldn’t exist.
A second instance occurred with my paternal grandfather, in frontier Colorado in the early 1900’s, when there occurred an event which guaranteed my existence. Grandfather escaped from a fall down into a deep well, miles from anyone on the prairie. His escape efforts are described elsewhere on this web site, under the category, Remembrances, “A Western Story.” The fact that he escaped near death, enabled him to later have my father. If he had died, I would not exist.
Therefore, we can see that each of our existences is strongly dictated by chance, or types of butterfly effects. While I am glad I had the opportunity to live and experience life, I am also acutely aware of how chancy and fragile life can be. We are each the product of countless butterfly effects, leading to our very existence, our good fortunes, and even the bad things that happen to us. To minimize the negative consequences we need to control future butterfly effects as best we can by examining our current behavior and following those pathways that have the highest probability of leading to good outcomes. However, the follow-up of unintended consequences is often hard to overcome. (Politicians, please pay attention!)
Perhaps, the greatest positive outcome of a specific butterfly effect, was the crucifixion of Jesus. Suppose Pontius Pilate had ignored the crowds and freed Jesus instead of Barabbas. What would have followed? Who knows.
Elsewhere on this website is a contemplative-opinion article, entitled “Searching for God,” under the Religious/Spiritual category. When I wrote this article I did not have the butterfly effect in mind, but it is a fact that the very creation of our solar system, as it is now structured, is the result of a series of cosmic, butterfly effects.
To thinking people, there is nothing new about all this. We all know that B follows A—as well as X, Y, Z, and a bunch of other things! We just need to take reasonable care with our behavior, so that which follows is most likely what we desire.